Team Coaching Edge: The ultimate guide to coaching teams to high performance

By Alison Grieve and Jenni Miller

The ultimate guide to coaching a team to high performance.

Unlock the full potential of your coaching practice and take your clients' teams to new heights with this comprehensive guide to team coaching, packed with expert insights and practical strategies for achieving success.

As a coach, you know that teams are critical for success in today's ever-changing organizational landscape. Aligned with the ICF core team coaching competencies, this practical guide by Alison Grieve and Jenni Miller offers a comprehensive approach to team coaching based on their Advantycs® methodology. Packed with expert insights and actionable strategies, it will equip coaches with the tools and knowledge they need to help their clients achieve higher levels of performance, engagement, and well-being.

Alison Grieve and Jenni Miller work with teams in large multi-national organizations to help transform company culture and create differentiated performance. Based on extensive, original research with over 200 teams, they have developed a blueprint for success that captures how the greatest teams think, act and communicate to overcome mediocrity and drive outstanding organizational performance. They frequently write and run authoritative webinars on teams based on their research and experience and won the 2022 & 2023 Stevie International Business Award and the Women in Business Company of the Year Award 2022.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Practical Inspiration Publishing
• Release date: Apr 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9781788605427

Alison Grieve

Alison Grieve is a sought-after learning professional, working globally across multiple industries at all levels. She focuses on driving results for clients by raising the performance of their people and teams to world class. Her depth of knowledge and skill in the talent and people space is unparalleled. She creates change that really works. Highly qualified, she is a Korn Ferry master associate, an NLP Master Practitioner and is a certified Executive Coach (ICF PCC). She is a founding director at Management Dynamics and a team coach, working with leaders and teams in some of the world’s most successful organizations.

Book preview

Introduction

Teams have stood the test of time and remain the lifeblood of any organization. However, their operational context has undergone significant changes in recent decades, and this transformation will only accelerate as the world becomes more complex, interconnected and ambiguous. In today’s landscape, teams represent a massive competitive advantage – individual capability is no longer enough. While organizations invest in their people’s development, motivation and rewards, tapping into the power of collaboration is the key to achieving something greater, more impactful and more powerful than what can be accomplished alone.

Many organizations excel at unleashing the potential of their individual employees. Yet, they recognize that to gain a competitive edge and execute strategies with the required innovation, complexity and speed, it is essential to unlock the potential of individuals working together harmoniously as a high-performing team.

Collaboration is on the rise, with people now dedicating 50% more time to working with others compared to two decades ago and spending 80% of their time on collaborative tasks. Hybrid working, which requires excellent collaboration, is now the most common work pattern for remote-capable employees.¹ Despite these trends, true collaboration remains elusive in most organizations, and its benefits are unevenly distributed. A mere 3% to 5% of employees contribute 20% to 35% of value-added collaboration, drawing recognition for their capability and willingness to help and earning pivotal roles in projects.²

Organizations aspire to unlock the capacity of all team members, not just a select few, and tap into the power of widespread, inclusive teamwork. Research and experience demonstrate that high-performing teams can achieve significantly superior results compared to independent individuals.³ By fostering a collaborative culture and harnessing the potential of collective effort, organizations can triumph in an increasingly dynamic and challenging business environment.

The growth of the team coaching industry

The coaching industry is growing fast – it was estimated to be $11bn globally in 2019, and is projected to almost double to nearly $21bn by 2030.⁴ When surveyed on their thoughts about coaching, leaders demonstrated a satisfaction rate of 95%, which underlines how effective individual coaching can be. A total of 97% of organizations believed that implementing coaching had an impact on their employee’s performance, while 80% of organizations globally use coaching in some way.⁵ All of this demonstrates the growing desire for coaching and the credibility that coaches now have in the organizational context. Coaching is finally an accepted methodology for developing individual team members, and senior leaders increasingly want their whole team to be able to benefit from the coaching process, not just a select few individuals.

The team-building industry is also large, estimated to be approximately $3bn globally in 2022, and predicted to grow to almost $10bn by 2028.⁶ The convergence of team building and coaching creates the team coaching approach, which responds to a pull from organizations to go beyond just an away day or fun team exercise. They want a focus on sustainable, increased performance and productivity which these experiences just cannot deliver.

The changing face of leadership development

In the past, organizations have emphasized the role of leaders as crucial to individual performance. They have established performance management, reward and recognition systems where leaders oversee their direct reports individually. Leadership development programmes have primarily concentrated on the leader’s ability to impact one direct report at a time. Occasionally, there has been a focus on visionary skills, which involve influencing large groups of people. However, within this paradigm, the leader assumes complete responsibility for the performance of the entire group reporting to them.

We are witnessing a noticeable shift in this perspective, moving towards teams assuming mutual accountability for their own performance, leveraging interdependence and reducing siloes. This shift is characterized by a flatter hierarchy and enhanced collaboration. The role of the leader is evolving into that of an enabler for their team – a person who creates an environment conducive to high performance and works with the team to maintain it.

Leaders possess a unique perspective of the team and their context, along with access to more resources than other team members. Despite this advantage, the leader is considered an integral part of the team, just like any other team member. In this new paradigm, the team collectively generate the desired outcomes, and the leader acts as a catalyst, facilitating the team in achieving their goals.

With all of this in mind, conventional leadership development methods are no longer fit for purpose. A fresh approach is necessary, and team coaching emerges as a powerful solution. Team coaching nurtures both the leader’s pivotal role within the team and the team’s overall performance improvement by focusing on the dynamics of the team.

The core emphasis lies in developing the mindsets of both the leader and the team simultaneously. Only after these mindsets have been transformed can one effectively cultivate the necessary skills in the leader and the team to sustain high performance. Team coaching addresses the holistic growth of the leader and the team, in the context of the system in which they operate, fostering a powerful and sustainable development process.

The changing team landscape

Teams are more complex than ever before because team members are more likely to be part of more than one team (e.g. in a matrix organization, task forces, project teams). This creates competing loyalties and priorities which challenge teams to be high performing. Gone are the days of simple reporting lines, one manager, clear and static job descriptions and longevity in role. Most people experience multiple reporting lines with several managers and fast-changing roles. This is a reality for teams, and they need to find a way to be high performing despite this context. It’s not going to go away – if anything it will just get more complex and move even faster than ever before. Team coaching unlocks the potential of teams who work in this way by helping them find strategies to be high performing in a complex world.

What can high-performing teams achieve that individuals can’t?

High-performing teams can achieve several things that individuals working alone cannot: they solve complex first-time problems; they anticipate and respond to change better; they make better decisions; they motivate each other; they are more innovative; and they create a sense of belonging and community.

They solve complex first-time problems

Increasingly, organizations are coming up against problems they’ve never seen before. High-performing teams are the secret to solving them again and again. The multiplier effect of several people working together, bouncing ideas off each other, sharing different perspectives, challenging ways of thinking and taking risks enables the team to come up with solutions that have never been tried before.

They anticipate and respond to change

The world is changing at an unprecedented pace with increasing amounts of ambiguity. Long gone are the days of predictable patterns of things like economic outlook, political stability, customer behaviour and technological progress, to name but a few. Individuals can achieve some success in analysing all these factors, drawing some conclusions and adapting to impending change. However, individuals will miss critical factors that teams of diverse thinkers and experiences will notice. Organizations are systems and only teams can create the impact required to change systems sustainably.

They make better decisions

Research tells us that teams make better decisions than individuals alone.⁷ This is because teams will debate and brainstorm options more effectively than one person will on their own. It’s also because many decisions require complex thinking which is impossible for people to do on their own – it requires different skillsets, perspectives and knowledge. High-performing teams ensure that they have great diversity of thought and skills, coupled with solid decision-making processes, which enable them to create superior outcomes.

They motivate each other

Individually, some people can be very self-motivated and driven. However, according to Gallup, only 21% of employees globally are engaged and low engagement alone costs the global economy $7.8 trillion.⁸ High-performing teams are, in our experience, more engaged because they tend to motivate each other and achieve better results together. Being part of a high-performing team creates the conditions for both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, so much so that people are reluctant to leave high-performing teams. You’ll also find that word gets around and people outside of the team want to join them.

They are more innovative

According to McKinsey, 84% of CEOs believe that innovation is critical to their organizational growth.⁹ However, it’s unlikely that individuals possess all the critical capabilities required to deliver innovation initiatives effectively. Innovation requires vision, curiosity and execution skills, all of which necessitate the collaboration only a high-performing team can achieve.

They have a sense of belonging and community

Organizations create some sense of belonging – for example, being part of something bigger than just yourself. Many have quite strong cultures which people enjoy and which create a feeling of community. However, the greatest source of belonging and community happens at the team level – the people you work with on a day-to-day basis. Some say that people join organizations and leave managers; we would extend this and say that people join organizations but leave managers and teams. High-performing teams recognize this and create strong bonds and a sense of community that only accelerate performance and well-being. While high-performing teams can be working in very stressful contexts, this community enables them to deal with their stress more effectively.

High performance is by design

Any team can be a good team with a little bit of luck, a good leader and positive intentions from team members. However, it’s impossible to be a high-performing team and sustain it indefinitely without putting effort into the team. A high-performing team is created by design and continuous focus on the conditions for success. This is where the power of team coaching really comes into its own – coaching challenges a team to accelerate their achievement of high performance and then sets them up for success in sustaining it. We explore this more in Chapter 2.

How to use this book

This book is designed to help you understand what team coaching is and the skills required. It also gives you a powerful methodology for effectively coaching teams, including a set of principles and conditions for success in teams, a coaching process, a diagnostic tool and a number of tools which you can access via our website.¹⁰

In writing this book, we have assumed that you are already an experienced individual coach and that you have some level of facilitation skill. Because of this, we don’t cover these skills in much detail. We focus on what you need as a team coach and how you utilize coaching and facilitation skills in your team coaching practice.

The book is in two parts. In Part 1, we explore the essentials of team coaching which includes what team coaching is (Chapter 1), why it’s useful (Chapter 2), the competencies of a team coach (Chapter 3) and how to develop your team coaching practice (Chapter 4).

In Part 2, we look at EDGE Team Coaching using the Advantycs® framework. We start by introducing Advantycs®, then we introduce the Edge Dynamics of Reason, Results, Routines, Relationships and Resilience (Chapter 5). In this chapter we also discuss how to use diagnostics to coach a team to develop insights and track progress. In Chapter 6, we introduce the Seven Principles of EDGE Team Coaching – principles which you should constantly bear in mind when working with teams. In Chapter 7 we share the EDGE Team Coaching Process, which helps you to structure your team coaching engagements. We then look at creating a team Reason (Chapter 8), delivering team Results (Chapter 9), building team Routines (Chapter 10), deepening team Relationships (Chapter 11) and sustaining team Resilience (Chapter 12). Each chapter provides a good understanding of the relevant Edge Dynamic and how it supports a team’s performance. It also includes some tools to help you coach a team on that Edge Dynamic, and insight about how the Edge Dynamics interact with each other.

Throughout the book you will find case studies, reference to tools and resources which you can use with your team coaching practice – these can be downloaded free of charge on our website: www.management-dynamics.com/teamcoachingedge. Each chapter also has a summary at the end which you can use as a powerful reference tool. If you ever need a quick reminder of the topics in the chapter, use this! You don’t need to read the book in consecutive order. It is written so that you can use it as a reference guide and dip in and out as you need to.

CHAPTER 1

What is team coaching?

In this chapter, we explore:

•What team coaching is and isn’t

•How team coaching is similar and different to coaching individuals

•The role of the team coach

Defining team coaching

Team coaching is using coaching techniques to enable a team to achieve high performance and sustain it over time. The International Coaching Federation (ICF) definition is ‘partnering in a co-creative and reflective process with a team and its dynamics and relationships in a way that inspires them to maximize their abilities and potential in order to reach their common purpose and shared goals’. ¹¹

In order to do this a team coach will use good coaching practice to identify the team’s performance objectives and desired outcomes, establish where they are now in relation to those outcomes and then support the team to take action to fill that gap.

There’s a lot of confusion amongst leaders, teams and coaches about what team coaching actually is. When we ask people what it is, they mention:

•Team building

•Training

•Consulting

•Mentoring

•Facilitation

All of these might be used as elements in your work with teams, but are not team coaching. Let’s explore each of these in turn.

Team building

This historically has been the ‘go to’ for many teams when they want to develop. This might be away-days in the wilderness or team tasks which are designed to push the team to their limits. Social events might also come under this category. They can be great fun (or not, depending on how they are set up) but tend to be one-off and short-term focused. By the end of a day like this, you might have a highly bonded team who’ve had a great time together and shared a special experience. It’s not team coaching, however, because there is no reflection and no action generated, and no follow up to maintain momentum from the insights generated. The ownership of the day sits with the person who is running the team-building session and not with the team.

Training

This is when a team needs to develop a particular skill or knowledge of something. For example, they might want to develop knowledge of a personality tool to use within the team. Or they might want to start working with a particular work process or learn how to improve their listening or communication skills. All of these things trigger training with a team, and they are not team coaching. This is because the trainer owns the process and is the expert on the content. They take the team through a curriculum of material and series of exercises and at the end of the training the team have developed their knowledge or skill in the area they are being trained in. Although the whole team might be attending the training together, it’s not team coaching because it’s trainer led. While you are trying to help the team to change their behaviour and do something different, you are doing so at the individual level by giving them some knowledge and helping them to practise a skill. This is very useful in a team context, but be clear, it’s not team coaching. When you use that new-found knowledge and skill to evoke awareness across the whole team, you are back in team coaching territory.

Consulting

When you are working with a team you may stray into consulting. For example, you may help a team to devise their strategy, and when doing this the team could look to you for guidance and expertise. This is consulting, not team coaching. If you have the relevant expertise this could be useful to the team, but if not, be careful. Be clear what you are an expert in and what you are not. If you have expertise in business strategy in their industry, you have the credentials to step into consulting and to give them a wider perspective, share best practices from other organizations and industries and challenge some of their assumptions about their own business with all of this in mind. However, remember when you are doing this, you are not team coaching, you are consulting. The ownership of the content has shifted to you as consultant, and away from the team.

Mentoring

You may be working as a